Attention all Knifemakers!.....Product dealers/retailers and/or knife makers/sharpeners/hobbyists (etc) are not permitted to insert business related text/videos/images (company/company name/product references) and/or links into your signature line, your homepage url (within the homepage profile box), within any posts, within your avatar, nor anywhere else on this site. Market research (such as asking questions regarding or referring to products/services that you make/offer for sale or posting pictures of finished projects) is prohibited. These features are reserved for supporting vendors and hobbyists.....Also, there is no need to announce to the community that you are a knifemaker unless you're trying to sell something so please refrain from sharing.
Thanks for your co-operation!

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I aswell have the poly science unit. Find it great for sous at home. Yeah u will have to cover the plastic lexan if you want to get it to max temp.
I just use a stock pot, find it more efficient.

As far as vacuum sealer vs chamber vac. Question is how serious are you about this cooking method. Do you want to invest a lot of money in one?
Yeah theres pro's and con's to both. i use a vacuum sealer at home. I can't sous liquids or compress fruit. But I'm ok with that.

At the restaurant i have a Chamber Vac that can do everything you want. Its nice but it was 3800$ . Yeah theres cheaper ones that are good for home.

I would say just try a vacuum sealer for 100-200$, try it. See how it works, practice your technique. Then if it works well your good. Or sell it and for the chamber Vac.

Thanks for your input. Poly science it will be. Guess I will mull over vacuum sealer suggestions and appreciate all of them. I don't want to get carried away more than necessary, but certainly want to get the job done for the least for the highest quality. I take the sous vide technique and cooking in general very seriously. I greatly enjoy my cooking and so do others. If it means investing more within reason to get better quality it is worth it to me. I will mainly be focused on proteins and collagen breakdown, but I am sure as I use it I will want to try more and more techniques. An earlier suggestion mentioned higher quality vacuum sealers have less deformation of scallops, etc. which matters to me.

Polyscience has also launched an IPAD app to take the guess work out of cooking sous vide....it is a thermal conductivity application thatt allows you to
put in several parameters lik kind of protein, thickness of the protein, desired temp, etc and gives you a very accurete guidline for cooking proteins. I believe it was $4.99 and worth it if you cook sous vide often.

Polyscience has also launched an IPAD app to take the guess work out of cooking sous vide....it is a thermal conductivity application thatt allows you to
put in several parameters lik kind of protein, thickness of the protein, desired temp, etc and gives you a very accurete guidline for cooking proteins. I believe it was $4.99 and worth it if you cook sous vide often.

Deckhand, I would definitely go with the Vac chamber before the poly-sci. Using a crock-pot PID will cost $200 as opposed to $800 for the poly-sci. The chamber is more critical than the water bath.

Seems like the vac master has good ratings combined with a poly-sci circulator seems like a good combination from my limited knowledge. Poly sci vs Sous vide supreme seem like only reasonable choices for the sous vide aspect.The vac master you recommended looks good for the vacuum sealer aspect.

I have the Cambro lid. Slick as all get out. Good about vac master but not sure why you would choose the 215 over the VP112? You must have a very large kitchen? Remember that you will be less likely to use something that isn't convenient. That is a serious machine though. I went back and fourth on them but decided on the 112 and couldn't be happier. Also remember that you will rarely use max pressure. Most of the time is 60 to 80 % of the maximum available pressure.